Re-reading the past: monuments, history and representation in short stories by Ivan Vladislavic and Zo Wicomb

As representations of particular moments in history, monuments provide useful indices for processes of remembering and forgetting that accompany ‘regime change’. Their paradoxical representational instability and their exposure to multiple readings and counter-readings over time make monuments fascinating material for literary investigations of the unstable nature of representation itself. Both Ivan Vladislavic and Zo Wicomb have used the trope of monuments in their short stories, enabling them to explore acts of reading that reveal a spectrum of interpretations, often ironically resistant to the authorized version of history being celebrated. This article argues that, in drawing attention to these particular cultural constructions, both writers are also underscoring the ironies inherent in the inability of cultural forms to ‘fix’ either the past or the present, particularly in transitional historical moments. Ivan Vladislavic’s ‘Propaganda by monuments’ and ‘The WHITES ONLY bench’ (1996), and Wicomb’s recent ‘The one that got away’ (2011), are considered together in the present article. Ref., sum. [Journal abstract]